What can higher education contribute to developing skills for the knowledge economy?

Strategies for higher education in a more open and online world: the role of open and distance learning

OECD IMHE General Conference 17 -19 September, 2012

Gard TitlestadSecretary General

ICDE

Outline

• Introduction • Demands and system failures• ODL Growth and disruptive initiatives• Technology facilitates• Impact through the knowledge triangle• To be addressed to…..• Conclusion

What is ICDE?

• the leading global membership organization for open and distance education

• an NGO official partner of UNESCO, and shares that agency’s key aim – the attainment of quality education for all

• member focused – ICDE is an organization which will involve members in decision making, in cooperative action and in cooperative problem solving.

• transparent – Members will be able to follow the activities and decisions of ICDE.

• ICDE believes that in pursuing education as a universal right, the needs of the learner must be central.

• senior management in member institutions is actively involved in ICDE

Global need for barrier-free access to higher education

• Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO “Higher education: In less than 40 years, enrolments have increased fivefold. Globally it is estimated that demand will expand from less than 100 million students in 2000 to over 250 million students in 2025.”

Students demands

Students and learners are gaining more influence and increasingly demanding quality online, resource based and flexible learning.

Mobilising the workforce:

Mobication

• Tomorrow’s employment policies must create conditions to facilitate labour mobility through the lifelong learning of the individual.

• Coordination between the labour market and education policy is crucial for business competitiveness and future welfare.

Education

WorkWelfare

Costs

School failure – system failure

• Reducing school failure pays off for both society and individuals. More education attainment provides better labour market prospects and contributes to economic growth and social progress. The highest performing education systems across OECD countries are those that combine high quality and equity.

Overcoming School Failure: Policies that WorkFebruary 2012

University drop-outs (or push outs?) cost 660 million Euros per year in Spain alone

Norway – 2005 - 2010

Total drop out/push out: 12% (Health educations)- 37 % (Management and Economy)

Only health educations have lower drop out rate than 20%

Dr Qian Tang, Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO,Flexible learning for inclusive education

• Yet all people, regardless of their sex, race, religion, disability or national, ethnic and social origin, are entitled to a quality education. Denying them such an opportunity is not only an infringement of their fundamental human rights; it is also a serious waste of society’s human resources. Indeed, education that is restricted to certain social groups deprives a country of significant assets and skills that could be tapped to build prosperous communities. Furthermore, it limits the impact of national efforts to create peaceful, just, fair and cohesive societies.

• Inclusive education is therefore non-negotiable.

ODL in rapid growth

• The world’s 18 largest mega-universities are open universities serving more than 14.3 million students. Most of these universities were founded after the 1970s.

• China: 1 of every 10 registered students in higher education is a student at The Open University of China.

• Africa: African Virtual University has signed up with 21 countries and 28 Universities to provide Open and Distance eLearning, based on OER and the Internet.

"Going the Distance: Online Education in the United

States, 2011"

• Almost one-third of enrolments in HE in the autumn of 2010 in the USA were online enrolments, with more than 30% of the students taking at least one course online.

Allen, E. I., Seaman, J. - Sloan Consortium, 2011

India25% of Indian students are now covered by

distance education

Lakh = 100.000

The Future - USA

• College presidents predict substantial growth in online learning: 15% say most of their current undergraduate students have taken a class online, and 50% predict that 10 years from now most of their students will take classes online.

• Nearly two-thirds of college presidents (62%) anticipate that 10 years from now, more than half of the textbooks used by their undergraduate students will be entirely digital.

• The Digital Revolution and Higher Education. 2011. By Kim Parker, Amanda Lenhart and Kathleen Moore

Disruptive innovationWikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Disruptive innovation does not make a good product or service better, but makes it more affordable and accessible, so more people can purchase or use it.

Coursera

nanoHUB-U

Technology as facilitator

Mansoor Al Awar, Chairman, Middle East e-Learning Association.

The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) offers tremendous educational opportunities to provide new innovative, accessible and more affordable ways of learning.

Mobile:

Rapid mobile delvelopment• There are 1.2 billion mobile

internet users worldwide• There are 5.9 billion mobile

subscribers (87 percent of the world population).

• Over 300,000 mobile apps have been developed in three years.

• Huge potential for education and learning

Sceptisism towards mobile tec. In education (UNESCO)

• Mobile technologies not yet massive impact on education

• Carries a stigma (distracting to young people, access to inappropriate content, destructive behaviour – bullying)

• Confuse access with learning

• Education policies rarely speak about the promise of mobile learning

Open Educational Resources - OER

• Any educational resources) that are openly available for use by educators and students, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees.

• Hugh potential for lowering barriers to HE, dramatic lowering costs, support resource based teaching, stimulate innovation in education.

• Impact on global economic growth?

• Rapid growth, slow uptake• UNESCO declaration, EU

consultation, OECD activity.

• Top down – bottom up

Universities:ODL and OER can fuel the Knowledge Triangle

OER and ODL

Open AccessResearch based OERResearch based teaching

Innovation in educationInnovate the learning system and institutionsKnowledge supply for innovation

High quality educationResearch based educationResource based education

To harvest the benefits from ODL

To be adressed:

Governments: • Optimal regulatory and

policy framework for ODL, incentives for OER

• Sector overarching policies for mobilising the workforce

• Initiatives for new knowledge on effect and impact of ODL on delivering high quality ODL

Universities: • Strategies and leadership• Build competencies• Faculty training, student

training for ODL• Flip the classroom for

student-oriented and personalised learning

HEI, private and public sector: Build partnerships and agreements for knowledge supply, mobilising the workforce

ConclusionsA strong need for:

• A professional, policy-oriented debate throughout the world, on the opportunities and challenges coming from a more open and online world.

• Innovative examples to be fed into the debate, fed into the development of the learning system.

• Research on distance, online, eLearning, in particular to have an oversight of where are we, what do we know, and what are the great challenges which need to be explored and researched.

• Need to be met by a “Partnership for inclusive, high quality open and online higher education”

Thank you!

titlestad@icde.org